This invention relates particularly to beverage containers made of material that can be recycled, particularly aluminum cans. The top of such cans have been permanently installed in the usual prior art process of filling the cans with fluid content, said tops having lines of weakening establishing removable portions that are discarded after tearing the same out of integral association with the can top. As a result, there has been a profusion of litter in the form of sharp metallic closures which are abandoned by the beverage consumer and which contaminate the environment. Although the larger volume of discarded metal container bodies are easily retrieved for recycling, the smaller and more dangerous closures are elusive with no economic means of salvage. Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a container and closure concept that is conducive to economic salvage and recycling utilizing extruded and/or pressed aluminum or the like as the basic material.
Beverage cans have been opened by the consumer with the use of an implement, either in the form of an opener tool or by lever means applied to removable tear-out portions such as "pull-tabs". In any case, extra implementation has been accepted as necessary, and in the case of "pull-tabs" there is the discard problem of sharp and dangerous trash. There is also the danger of sharp openings in the container lid. It is a general object of the present invention to provide the consumer with a container closure that is removable without added implementation and without producing dangerous trash. A feature of this invention is that both the can body and closure remain intact as sizeable utilitarian objects, the body to be used as a drinking flask and the closure to be used as a coaster or tray.
Beverages are merchandised in container cans comprised of cylinders formed by rolling sheet into tubes with disc-shaped ends applied and sealed for hermetic containment; also cans comprised of extruded cylinders pressed from billets forming the container that is filled and to which a disc-shaped top closure is applied with a perimeter seal. It is the latter type beverage container with which the present invention is particularly concerned, it being an object to provide a removable closure disc for a container cylinder, all of which can be made of malleable material in a form conducive to be retained for use and to be recycled.
Prior art container lids have been attached to the container bodies by permanent bead structures rolled by means of a series of forming operations inseperably locking the cylinder and lid together at a "bead". This accepted procedure is to be replaced in the present invention by a releasable rim that is seperably crimped over a perimeter rib or flange on the container body. With the present invention, the state of the art processes of container manufacture are taken into consideration, so that existent canning machinery is to be used with the modification of the body flange and closure dies. For example, the previous start of a flange at the rim of the container is completed into a finished preformed flange for the subsequent interlocked reception of the rim of the lid. And, the previous unfinished lid perimeter is preformed with a snap-on rim adapted to subsequent crimping and to locking engagement with said preformed flange, subject to release from the container body by means of upward manipulation applied to its characteristic depending skirt.